


Honey, I Shrunk the Avengers

by ssyn3, tisfan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Anal Sex, Dorito Steve Rogers, Engineering, M/M, MacGyver-ism, Magic, Magic and Science, Mutual Pining, Panic Attacks, Shrinking, accidental nudity, creative use of office supplies, oatmeal raisin cookies are gross
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-22 14:22:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10698843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssyn3/pseuds/ssyn3, https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Egyptian Goddesses, being trampled by an elephant, and thrown into a building. Typical Wednesday for the Avengers.What's not typical is the fact that Tony and Steve are now knee-high to a Barbie doll and stuck in an office building in midtown with no way to contact the other Avengers.Tony Stark didnotsign up for the What the Fuck of the Month Club.





	Honey, I Shrunk the Avengers

[ ](http://it.tinypic.com?ref=9fura1)

 

“I did not sign up for the What the Fuck of the Month club,” Tony was saying.

“You said that last month, too,” Steve said. “You should cancel your membership.” He rolled over, eyes still firmly closed. His head ached like he’d been thrown in front of a cannon and then run over by an elephant. (The scary thing was that was actually what happened and the less he thought about it, the better.)

“Yes, well, last month I was talking about Clint’s mayonnaise and banana sandwiches, which, quite frankly, are just an affront on decent taste and I refuse to discuss it further,” Tony said. “Come on, Vanilla Ice, get up. I need you to pinch me and make sure I’m not dreaming.”

“We were attacked by magicians, Shellhead,” Steve said. “Whatever you’re seeing is both weird and probably there. Are we in immediate peril?”

“Noooooo,” Tony said, slowly, drawing out the world until his voice faded off in a whisper.

“Then I’m going to lay here for a minute,” Steve said, leaving his eyes firmly shut. Whatever it was, he really wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“Yeah, sure, don’t mind me,” Tony said, his voice spiraling upward. “Just because what’s happened is scientifically impossible and magic fucks with my life on every possible level, doesn’t mean I need any sort of reassurances at all. Because, you know, you just can’t make organs smaller without _consequences_. Take the lungs, for example. Shrink them length-wise by a factor of just two and the surface area decreases by a factor of four and a volume of eight. That _drastically_ affects the rate of diffusion of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the lungs. We shouldn’t be able to breathe right now at all, much less being able to hold a conversation of any sort. Not to mention reducing our external surface area -- which is how we shed heat, by the way, in case you missed that day in biology class -- is down by a factor of five thousand times. We’d probably be burning ourselves alive, except that our mass, which generates heat, is down by over three hundred and fifty thousand times, so technically, we should be frozen by now, even in the space of this conversation, rather than you just laying there ignoring me.”

“What… what are you even talking about, Tony?” Steve put a lot of effort into it and sat up.

“I’m talking about the fact that we are both currently about _four inches tall_ , Steve!”

Steve’s eyes snapped open without his consent. He looked up. Way up. They were under what looked like a rolling desk chair; the wheels were filthy and covered in dirt and grease. To one side of them lay the Iron Man armor. What little of it Steve could see from this rather low perspective seemed taller than a two storey house.

“What the fuck?”

“I told you. Not a member of that club, Steve.”

***

Sometimes it was just easier to think he was dreaming. Reality didn’t change at all. He couldn’t suddenly fly, or have conversations with his second grade teacher, and the floor didn’t turn into lime jello, but at least he could wrap his head around the so-very-much-Not physics going on. “This is all a dream,” Tony said, firmly.

“You know, I don’t think it is,” Steve said. “I think that war-goddess lioness creature --”

“Sekhmet,” Tony said, scrambling around in his genius brain. He’d read the files, hadn’t he? “Egyptian goddess of war, sun, and healing. Also, apparently, making shrinky dinks.”

The war part of her circle of influence had been fun; Sekhmet’s presence had stirred up a bunch of lingering anger and resentment wherever she went, driving people to violence. Just up the two miles she’d walked since appearing out of the museum (seriously, archaeologists, man, those guys were going to destroy the world because they simply could not accept that some things had been buried under the sands for a damned good reason and because the ancient Egyptians couldn’t fire rockets into the sun or anything more permanent than dropping millions of tons of rocks on a thing) before Thor had appeared with two of her Canopic jars and sucked part of her back into the void, she’d caused no end of problems, primarily road rage getting out of hand.

There were still three more jars out there, and while she was hurt and fleeing, she’d managed to 1) knock Steve off the side of a building and while Captain America could, actually, fall about thirty stories without killing himself, it was painful and 2) smashed Iron Man and Cap into a building when Tony had strained his repulsors to the max to catch Steve before he hit the street.

And since that was the last thing Tony remembered before waking up somewhat shorter than a smurf, he was pretty sure that was when she’d hit them with the shrink whammy.

Which meant they were in an office building. Somewhere in midtown. Great.

And the rest of the team had no idea where they were. Well, probably not entirely true; they’d be able to follow the wake of destruction to where the Iron Man suit was in pieces; but…

“I’m hungry,” Steve said.

“Of course you are --” Tony started, then his own stomach growled. _Well, shit._ “Shrews.”

“What?”

“We’re the size of shrews, Steve,” Tony said, heaving a great sigh. (Well, actually, it was a _tiny_ sigh, all things considered, but it felt pretty big.) “Do you know how much shrews have to eat just to survive? Twice their body weight, daily.”

“It’s awfully hard to fight evil if you have to stop and eat every fifteen minutes, Tony,” Steve pointed out.

“Ya think?” Tony looked around. The room was, of course, enormous. But it contained standard office furniture -- rolling chair and desk and huge power cables that were probably connected to a workstation -- which meant, like any other office in the world, there were probably chips or candy-bars or something like that in one of the drawers. The question was, how to get to it when currently they had what you might call a small handicap.

Tony tugged on the phone cable hanging down from the side of the desk. It was fatter than was going to fit comfortably in his hand, and unlike Steve, climbing the rock wall was not one of his favorite pastimes, but maybe they could scale the side of the desk. If nothing else, getting a better look at the room would probably be to their advantage. He wondered if they could get a phone call out -- their voices were pretty normal-sounding when they talked to each other, but he wasn’t sure it’d carry across a phone line. And it was unlikely that someone left a cellphone in the office over the weekend, so sending a text was out.

And aside from Tony, no one checked their damn emails more than once a week. Well, except for Clint and that was probably because he was a tumblr and facebook addict.

“Gimme a leg up, Cap,” Tony said, grabbing hold of the cord. He stepped into the cup of Steve’s hand and got boosted up an extra two or three inches at least, which made it still probably another twenty inches or so to the top of the desk, which sort of sucked because he was already getting a pain in his hand from gripping the phone cord, but what else were they going to do? He gritted his teeth and pulled himself onward.

He made it to the top (eventually) and turned to give Steve a hand the rest of the way up (only fair, since he got the initial boost, right? And had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that he so rarely got to touch Steve’s hand. Right. Right.)

“Oof. You’re only four inches tall,” Tony complained as Steve practically crawled over him to get to the surface of the desk. “How are you still so freaking heavy?”

Steve straightened, then pressed his hand to the top of his head and shot it straight out, waving his palm a good quarter inch over Tony’s head. “Still taller than you,” Steve pointed out.

“Seriously? That’s what we’re doing now?” Tony rolled his eyes and poked Steve in the ribs, which did not get a laugh, but at least got him to reflexively lower his arm.

As a note, Tony discovered that desk toys were a lot less cute when you were four inches tall. There was something downright creepy about baseball player bobbleheads when they were the same height as you. Like mannequins. Or clowns. Ug. He shifted around to put Steve between him and the plastic horrors.

“Oh, look,” he said, grabbing Steve’s arm, and if he didn’t let go because this was weird and unpleasant, then Steve at least did him the favor of not mentioning it. Or pulling away, which was even better. “Doritos.”

Good thing Cap’s strength was still something else, because getting a snack-sized bag of chips open while full-sized often involved leverage that Tony didn’t think they could get at this size. But Cap just grabbed hold of the bag and stretched his biceps and triceps to their max (how did his shirt not just explode off him when he did that? Really? This was a thing that required greater study, and making Cap rip up a bunch of stuff. Tony could get into that, as an experiment. For science.) and the bag practically exploded, dumping Cool Ranch dust all over everything and nearly burying Steve in a pile of chips.

Ok, human sized Doritos were… well, human sized. Fortunately, they still weren’t exactly what one would call structurally sound. Steve dragged one chip out and stomped down on it in the middle, breaking it up into manageable pieces. It probably wasn’t very sanitary, but they weren’t in a position to be picky; even Tony’s stomach -- which he could normally ignore for hours, especially when he had a giant problem looming -- was grumbling with painful insistence.  

 

[ ](http://it.tinypic.com?ref=24wc2le)

 

Tony picked up a broken corner piece, about as far away from Steve’s boot as he could manage and nibbled at it. Even broken into shards, it wasn’t exactly an easy snack; the crunched bit was about the size of a piece of paper, but more like trying to eat a pie-plate, rather than a crisp. Tony settled for sort of licking at one side until it softened and then chewing it, rather than what Steve was doing; breaking it down into smaller pieces until they were somewhat like a taco. And Steve’s mouth stretched wide to cram the whole thing in there, which was just a thought Tony didn’t want in his head right that second, okay, please, brain?

After Steve had shoved down two entire chips all by himself, Tony picked up one of the triangles. Awkward, but manageable, and held it up, then peered around the shape to look at Steve.

“What are you doing, Tony?”

“Come on, Cap, you can’t tell me you don’t know that one of your nicknames with the fans is Dorito? I’m just trying to get the resemblance.”

“ _What_?”

Tony laughed. “So you _didn’t_ know?”

“I mean I don’t get it,” Steve said.

“Oh, well, you know --” Tony let go of the crisp, which hit the desk surface and shattered (really, not a structurally stable food product). “You’re kinda built like one.”

“A corn chip?”

“Big shoulders, tiny little waist.” Tony made a triangle with his hands. “And you know, everyone wants to lick you.”

Steve turned pink. “Thank you, Tony, really, I needed that thought. Very productive.”

Tony finished off his snack, trying to ignore how _empty_ he still felt, especially in favor of thirsty. That was going to be fun; Steve’s super arms or not, Tony wasn’t sure they could open a soda or bottle of water without drowning. Tony frowned, sat down on a red stapler, and stared around at the office space.

Aside from being wrecked -- one super soldier and Tony’s armor made a hell of a mess -- it was your typical cubical hive for the peons surrounded by offices on the outside. Terrible work environment, really; made everyone both claustrophobic and paranoid. Some of the offices had glass windows next to the door. Privacy was not equivalent to lack of productivity, no matter what some stupid, badly researched metric said. But at least Tony could get a look around without having to climb all over everything, so yay for whack-a-mole layout.

“Steve?”

“Huh?”

“Steve!”

“What, Tony?”

“STEVE!”

Steve reached over and grabbed Tony’s shoulder, shaking. “WHAT?”

“He’s got a drone.”

“What?”

“Junior Vice President Scott Holden,” Tony said, pointing at the office. “Has a _drone_. A quad-copter, as a point of fact.”

“A --”

“A toy, Steve,” Tony sighed. “It’s a toy. But it’s a toy that _flies_. It’s remote controlled, and since it usually carries a camera -- sometimes even to space -- it can probably carry us. Back to the Tower.”

“Right,” Steve said. He turned around and offered Tony his back. “Climb on, I can rappel down the side faster than you.”

“Do you ever stop showing off your Nutra-gen muscles, big guy?” Tony sighed, but climbed up, piggy-back, and tried to ignore how nicely his legs fit around Steve’s hips.

Steve didn’t respond to that, and Tony was suddenly a little too nervous being carried down the side of the desk to smart off for a few minutes, at least.

They ended up walking around the remains of Tony’s suit; the suit not being what one would call easily scalable.

“I don’t get any of this,” Steve said.

“Any of what?”

“Why did we shrink, but the shield and your suit are still full sized?”

Tony shrugged. Magic didn’t make sense, that’s why it was _magic_ and full of wrong. “Maybe it just shrinks organics?”

“But we’re still dressed,” Steve pointed out. “And your arc-reactor is shrunk with us --”

“Thank you,” Tony said, sharply. “Thank you, I was trying not to think about that, it doesn’t make sense, none of this makes sense, and I don’t understand it at all, and we should be dead a hundred times over by now, and we’re not, but we could, at any minute and --” Tony could feel the panic building behind his eyes, under his arc-reactor, boiling through his blood-stream, and literally he should either be frozen to death or his blood should have boiled already and magic was just wrong and evil and shouldn’t… he closed his eyes, crumpled to the floor, panting for air that shouldn’t fit in a chest this tiny, shouldn’t…

He couldn’t breathe.

Couldn’t.

 _Breathe_.

Suddenly there was a mouth on his. A blast of Dorito-flavored air pushed into his mouth, into his lungs and then Tony was inhaling on his own, but the lips didn’t leave his. A warm, hard body was up against his, hands gripping his shoulders tight, not painfully so, but urgent, nonetheless.

For just a moment, the mouth on his softened, and it became something that was almost, but not quite, a kiss. Huh.

Tony opened his eyes. Was Steve _kissing_ him? Because really, that would be more incredible magic than being shrunk and rather a lot more improbable.

***

He hadn’t meant to kiss Tony; that wasn’t the plan at all, and he was all about having a plan, wasn’t he? Steve had just panicked. Tony had pressed a hand to his chest and his lips went an unpleasant shade of blue and while he’d gasped for air for a few seconds, then he’d just _stopped breathing._ Tony’s mouth had gaped open and he moved like he was trying desperately to suck air and couldn’t.

So Steve had given him a little boost, just a little help.

That Tony had started breathing again almost immediately was such a relief that Steve froze up, and then the mouth under his moved, lips sealing against his and it was so warm, so necessary, that Steve hadn’t pulled back. Not… immediately.

Both of them opened their eyes and broke apart. Tony’s hand came up to touch his lower lip, which made Steve really want to… do something about it. He wasn’t sure what ( _kiss him stupid_ ) of course, but something. Steve was panting hard, his heart thundering in his chest, and there were certain other activities goes on in other parts of his body that he wasn’t going to think about, aside from being grateful that, unlike the Iron Man suit, his Captain America body armor had shrunk with him and that the armor was rigid enough that it held all of him, well, tucked in.

Tony blinked a few times and then shook his head. Steve opened his mouth to apologize, maybe? Explain?

“Nope,” Tony said, holding up a hand. “Whatever it is, I’m noping out of this conversation. Don’t want to have it, not right now, okay, Capsicle? We’re just. Not going to do this, now.”

“Okay, Tony,” Steve agreed, because he really didn’t want to do this -- whatever this was, he was pretty sure this was on a long list of things he wasn’t going to like -- either. Now. Or maybe even ever.

Tony eyed him for a minute, surprised by Steve’s mild agreement, then nodded and continued toward the office and the drone and perhaps some possible way out of this mess.

Tony grabbed a penny from under someone’s desk and used it to pry up a corner of the floor. “Lots of companies these days have a crawlspace,” Tony explained, “to lay their fiber-optics and power cables under the floor, where it’s easier to get to when you need to increase the power capabilities or replace line. And that way, we don’t have to figure out how to get through the door.”

The crawlspace was dusty and gross, but that wasn’t unexpected, really. They had a bit of a chore finding a panel inside the office to push up, the desk and chair and filing cabinets were apparently laying all over the panels and even Steve didn’t have that sort of upper body strength when he was four inches tall, but eventually their nudging and pushing got them inside.

Watching Tony work was always a thing of joy and bewilderment. There was something about Tony, like he had a HUD inside his skull that just glanced around a room and started re-appropriating materials. Within twenty minutes, he’d grabbed post-its from the desk, outlined a list of materials, did some sketches with a piece of pencil lead he’d broken off from the guy’s mechanical pencil (in Tony’s tiny hand, it still looked like a chunk of artist’s charcoal.) and started ordering Steve around to recover bits and pieces of office supplies.

“We’re lucky this guy’s a squirrel,” Tony said, laughing with delight as they found a ball of rubber bands and a metal basket inside one desk drawer.

“A what?” Steve was straightening paper-clips, which was harder than it should have been. Back in his old body, when Steve had struggled to do such simple tasks as carry a gallon of milk, or break up kindling for a fire, even then, he could unfold a paperclip. Of course, five foot four was short, but not as short as four inches, and the damn paperclips were enormous, comparatively.

“He’s probably an office supply cabinet thief,” Tony said, tossing an alligator clip onto the desk. The edges gleaned like a blade. “There’s shit in here he has absolutely no reason to need, and probably got dropped into the general supply budget.”

Steve blinked. “Since when are you worried about that sort of thing? Budgets and reasonable restraint?”

“I’m not --” Tony dragged out a whole strip of twist ties. “I’m going to send this guy a gift card to Office Max when we’re home and safe, because he’s probably going to save our asses with this mess.”

“Okay, c’mere, you done with those, good, good, gimme --” Tony pushed the wire-frame letter basket over to the side of the drone. “What you’re gonna do here is twist these around the edge of the basket, so I can hook it onto the drone.”

Steve stared at the pile of paperclips. So now he had to bend them all back up again? Ug… _Tony_ …

While Steve was involved in creative twist-tying, Tony was unscrewing the casing from around the drone’s remote, using an eyeglass repair kit from Holden’s desk. Tony looked ridiculous, standing next to a screwdriver that was nearly taller than he was, but it seemed to be working.

“Give me a lever long enough and a good fulcrum point,” Tony said, when he noticed Steve watching, “and I can move the world.”

Steve snorted.

Some time later, Tony nudged Steve. “Here.”

“What here?” He looked down to find a pen cap full of water and some raisins. “Where’d you get that?”

Tony pointed. Holden had a water bottle in one desk drawer that Tony had jammed a safety pin into. The bottle was now dripping water rather rather steadily, which would be messy later, but nothing they could do about that. “When there’s some air in it, we might be able to turn it over to save some water, but I’m hoping we’re not here that long.”

Tony cupped his hands over the dribble and washed his face; water made his flightsuit stick to him even more closely than before. Steve… Steve should not be so fascinated by that. He really should not. He stuffed most of the raisin in his mouth and concentrated on chewing.

“I hate raisins,” Tony muttered, eating another one like it was an apple.

“Freak,” Steve said.

“Raisins are evil disguising bits of nonsense. A waste of perfectly good wine, and often camouflage themselves into cookies that you think are going to be lovely chocolate chip and then, wham! You’re accidentally eating an oatmeal raisin cookie and it’s just soooo disappointing.”

“It’s a cookie,” Steve pointed out, philosophically. “All cookies are good, by definition.”

Tony just stared at him.

“What? I grew up without much in the way of cookies. I like all cookies, Tony.”

“Even those disgusting little Italian wedding cookies? There’s just something wrong with you, on a molecular level, Steve. Erskine must have genetically burned off your taste buds or something.”

“Pretty sure not,” Steve said, turning back to the work at hand.

Tony threw up his hands in disgust.

Some time later, Tony took the modified drone for a test spin around the room, using two rubber duckies to represent him and Steve in the basket.

“If she weighs the same as a duck… then she floats on water… and therefore… a witch! A witch!”

Steve didn’t bother to try to make sense of that; he recognized Tony’s “I’m quoting something” voice.

“All right, then,” Tony said, when he landed the contraption. “You ready to get out of here?”

Steve inhaled, blew air out sharply. No, no, no, he was not, no. “This may well be the dumbest thing I have ever done.”

“Pretty sure not, blondie.” Tony tossed the two ducks out of the basket -- well, shoved them over the side, really -- and dragged his altered remote in, then belted himself down to the basket with a twist tie.

“Are you sure you can fly this thing, Tony?”

“All flying machines have four basic controls: roll, pitch, yaw and speed,” Tony said. He was still using his I’m Quoting Something voice. “It’s just a matter of figuring out which button does what, and that’s the easy part. This is gonna be fun, Cap, stop whining.”

***

It was… not fun.

There was no reason, however, for Tony to admit that.

The biggest hardship was finding a good altitude to travel. Too low and people would see them (and probably try to catch them before they could get warned away, and while it might be helpful to be able to talk to people, Tony didn’t have a lot of faith in the individual New Yorker to not want to keep a four inch Captain America in a fishtank like a pet or something.)

Too high and it’s not exactly like they were packing parachutes, was it? Steve might live through it, god knows the super soldiers were hard as fuck to kill, but Tony had proven a number of times that he was exceptionally vulnerable to death. Just because he kept coming back from it didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to have it stick one of these days.

Tony eventually settled for about four storeys up. He’d probably pancake if they got upended, but it’s not exactly like he had a choice.

And he hadn’t exactly not counted on windshear as being a problem, but this fucking quadcopter wasn’t exactly aerodynamic with a wire basket attached to it.

Tony sighed, squinted through the flight-goggles he’d made for himself and Steve out of a discarded plastic straw he’d found in Holden’s desk drawer (Really. Had to buy that guy something nice, assuming that Tony lived through this shit.) and a couple of twist ties. They weren’t exactly comfortable, but having the wind in his eyes was a lot less comfortable.

But Tony was totally going to blame lack of engineering for why his peripheral vision was off. He didn’t see the damn bird until it was almost on top of him

“Tony,” Steve said.

“What?” Tony adjusted the yaw, shook off Steve’s hand.

“Tony?”

“What?”

“Tony!”

Tony turned around and damn near got his head bitten off by a giant fucking raven.

Okay, so it was probably a normal sized raven and they weren’t exactly not flying around in a shiny quadcopter, but for fuck’s sake! Really? As huge as the damn thing was, the raven was like being aerial bombarded by a dragon.

**CAW!**

 

**[](http://it.tinypic.com?ref=fdxf9k)**

 

Ow. Tony leaned hard on the stick, dragging the quadcopter into a lazy spiral. The thing was not exactly built for hairpin turns.

The raven wasn’t, either, but it was faster than Tony was, claws snatching.

Steve grabbed for the few weapons Tony had fabricated from desk toys and tools; nothing much. An unfolded safety pin and a Snapple bottle cap served as sword and shield. Steve fended off a stabbing beak with the shield and jabbed at the bird’s bright eye with the pin.

“Hold it steady!” Steve barked.

“You wanna fly, shortstack? No.” Tony jammed the stick down, dropping the drone fifteen feet straight down and he was goddamn glad he’d belted himself in. He could feel gravity lose them for a second, try desperately to throw them out of the basket.

The raven grabbed hold of the basket and fucking shook it, midair. Steve shouted as he lost hold of the bottle cap and it tumbled from their gondola, spinning into the streets below. The bird cawed again as Steve stabbed the scaly talons with his pin. Tony leaned back, went through a series of dizzying altitude changes, which didn’t seem to help. Shiny, bobbling craft, it was only more attractive to the acquisitive bird.

“Tower’s coming up,” Steve reported, pointing. He hissed, jabbed out with the pin as the bird snapped at his hand, leaving a bleeding, scored wound behind.

“I’m gonna circle around one of JARVIS’s cameras, hopefully I can get his attention,” Tony said. He swung wide. This would be a lot easier if the drone was built to barrel roll, but Tony was pretty sure if the craft ended up upside down, they’d just fall. He climbed; headed for the cameras, and eventually, the Avenger’s living space.

“What do you think JARVIS is going to go about a damn bird?”

“Aside from shoot it?”

“Can he do that?”

“I could do it, if I had a suit,” Tony pointed out. Probably. Of course, if he had a suit, he wouldn’t exactly be shooting at a bird, because he wouldn’t fucking need to be shooting at a bird, now would he? “But no, I’m hoping he’ll just let us in the building.”

Steve grabbed a handful of thumbtacks that Tony had stashed wrapped in a kleenex and threw them at the bird as if they were darts. The damn bird dodged; what was that fucking thing, the road runner? Wile E. Coyote, super genius, that was Tony all right and he was about to get pasted by a fucking murder of one. How was this fair? How was any of this fucking fair?

It was getting colder as Tony circled Avengers Tower, climbing, climbing. The wind was worse up here, and god, Tony was fucking freezing. He swooped a few more times, the bird batting the drone off course and then they were over the balcony to the kitchen! The door slid open on automatics and Tony pulled the stick all the way to the left, nearly upending them, but managed to get in the open space.

“Close the blast doors, close the blast doors!” He yelled, hoping to Tesla that JARVIS could hear him.

Tony glanced over his shoulder to watch the raven plow, full-force, into the sliding glass door. The bird cawped weakly, staggered around in a circle on the balcony, then recovered. It _tak tak tak_ ed at the glass a few times, then cawed again, loud and disgruntled, before flapping off to bother someone else with a shiny.  
  
Tony landed the drone on the kitchen table, panting for breath. “Don’t you ever, ever tell Sam I did that, okay? Okay.”

“What, got your ass handed to you by a bird?” Steve asked. He peeled the makeshift goggles off his face, his hair sticking up in all directions. Tony had the wildest urge to kiss him stupid; just the adrenalin bleed off, he told himself. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

***

“Sir, I appear to be malfunctioning,” JARVIS reported. Steve winced. JARVIS’s normal speaking voice was never particularly loud, although it was specifically designed to cut through arguing Avengers, so it could be painful on occasion, but this shouldn’t have been one of those times.

“Ow,” Tony said, wiggling a finger in his ear. “Hey, buddy, no you’re not malfunctioning, unless it’s something other than my being knee high to a Barbie doll. That’s a thing that apparently can happen. But I need you to talk a little quieter, apparently. Tiny ears are a little more sensitive. Can you get me an elevator? And ask U if he’ll retrieve Box P-71 from storage.”

“Sir, you said --”

“I know what I said. That was then, this is now, and now doesn’t look very good from this height, buddy, I gotta say. I’m really not likin’ it all that much. Also, me an’ Steve are starving. What can we get to eat that’s in easy reach?”

“Easy reach for you, sir?” JARVIS inquired. “If your flying machine is still operable, there are bananas on the counter, just four feet to the left of you.”

Steve made a face; bananas were one of those things that he really did not like about this shiny new world.

“There is also one of Agent Barton’s pudding cups next to it.”

“That’ll do,” Tony said. He sighed and beckoned to Steve. “I’m developing an antipathy for flying, I’ll tell you what.”

“Once more into the breech,” Steve muttered, helping him to get the craft right side up. Oh, his shoulders were aching. It’s not like he wasn’t capable of lifting a car if he needed to, he just didn’t like to need to.

***

Fed, Tony and Steve used up the last of the drone’s battery to get to the elevator. After that, everything was on foot, but at least JARVIS was opening doors and punching buttons for them.

Getting DUM-E to not run them over was interesting -- and by interesting, Tony definitely meant terrifying and he regretted every single instance of threatening DUM-E with community college -- but eventually they managed to climb up onto the bot and get him to trundle them around the workshop.

U had the container Tony needed.

“What is that?”

Inside the box were a few beads of blue and red gel.

“Pym particles in suspension,” Tony said. “Howard stole ‘em from Hank Pym back in the seventies. It’s what led to Pym’s split with Stark Industries. I don’t know that Pym ever knew Dad had accomplished the theft, but Aunt Peggy --” Steve flinched and Tony tried to ignore that. It wasn’t his fault that Tony’d spent most of his life with Steve’s friends who were all mostly dead by the time Steve came out of the ice and he really couldn’t talk about his past without someone coming up that Steve had known “-- kinda yelled at Dad about it. Honestly, it’s a wonder that Howard looked as good as he did, later in life, because Aunt Peggy kept breaking his nose.”

That earned him a rueful little chuckle. “I always did like a feisty brunette,” Steve said, and for some reason, he gave Tony a significant look.

Throwing that aside, because Tony was an expert at ignoring everything that didn’t make sense to him, especially when he was afraid it would make sense if he looked at it too closely, and he didn’t really want to think about the feisty brunettes that Steve liked. “Anyway, Dad never used the particles, but he was also stubborn and stupid and he wouldn’t give them back, either, or admit to his part in the theft. So, after he died, I found them in one of his wall safes. And I didn’t want to mess with that shit, so… here they are.”

“Just in time for us to need growing up.”

“Excuse you,” Tony said. “I refuse to grow up. Even if I have to get _bigger_.”

“There’s a dirty joke in there, even if I can’t quite put my finger on it,” Steve mused. Tony blinked a few times; now there were about eight million dirty jokes that Steve could put his finger on, and a couple of lewd suggestions about things he could put his finger on and… yeah, need to stop thinking about that, Stark. Work to do, right? Right.

“I’m going to need to adjust the mix,” Tony said. “Pym’s standard dose puts things about this tall.” He held out his hands, indicating something about the size of an ant; what would be an action figure to the four-inch body. “While I’m sure Bruce doesn’t have a problem with seeing the screen at the movies, I don’t think we want to be nine feet tall permanently.”

He got to work, feeding specs into the fabricators and taking measurements. And more measurements, because measure twice, cut once, and in this case, cutting was going to be unpleasant.

“Sir,” JARVIS put in, “Based on the cross-interaction between the Higgs field, which controls the atom mass and the Pym field which affects the atom size, we only have enough particles for one application.”

“Which means what?” Steve glanced up, still expecting JARVIS to live in the ceiling. It was cute, the golden-age science fiction ideation that Steve and some of the others still had. One of these days, he was going to make a hologram for JARVIS to project. Except that JARVIS was never interested in having a form, even if it was merely a hologram. He prefered to exist as a person on his own merits rather than replicating any of the more human characteristics beyond those necessary for communications.

“Which means we’ll have to grow at the same time,” Tony said. “While touching. If you watch too many eighties movies, we could have some cross-pollination, which --”

“I find that outcome unlikely, sir,” JARVIS put in.

“What are you talking about?”

“We’ll have to be as close as possible,” Tony said. “And… there’s a non-zero possibility that our atoms might… merge.”

“How close?”

“I recommend removal of unnecessary matter, as well, before the shift,” JARVIS said.

“What?”

Tony sighed. He could tell that Steve already knew what JARVIS was talking about and was either just in denial or wanted to make Tony say it out loud. “He’s saying we need to get naked.”

“Tony, no.”

 _Oh, for Christ’s sake._ “Don’t worry, Freezer Burn, I’m not going to molest you.”

“I’m not worried about _you_. That wasn’t what I --” Steve was blushing. Oh, now that _was_ interesting.

U fetched the emitter that Tony had hastily had fabricated, which put an end to that conversation. Tony loaded the particle mix into the emitter and held up a single round tube, sealed at both ends.

“What do we do, now?” Steve hadn’t stopped blushing and he was positively refusing to meet Tony’s gaze, which made Tony really want to duck into the Captain’s line of sight; there might be some really useful data in his expression. Also, it was childish and obnoxious, which was a pretty big temptation, too.

“Strip. Find someplace comfortable to stand, and hug me.”

“You know, I always thought being seduced by Tony Stark was going to sound more interesting, and less like a military decontamination order,” Steve said, stroking his chin.

_What?_

Okay, the worst thing about the flightsuit was that it was one zipper, a patch of velcro at the cuffs and then Tony was stark (ha!) naked. The Captain America armor, on the other hand, was a complicated array of autozips and straps. And, apparently, Steve had problems getting his own boots off. Leverage, it was a thing, even when you were four-inches tall. Which meant Tony got the dubious joy of leveraging Steve’s boot between his naked thighs and yanking. _Tag that for later perusal._

Steve was awkward and flustered by the time he was half dressed, his hands were shaking, for Tesla's sweet sake. Tony scoffed, brushed Steve’s hands aside and let his own fingers work the seals.

“At least the suit didn’t shrink with me,” Tony said. “I have a whole automated system to get into and out of that thing; I hate to think how long it would take you and a jeweler’s tool to get me out of it.”

And then they were both naked; heads held high, and at least in Steve’s case, hands held low. Tony refrained from rolling his eyes, but whatever, not everyone was comfortable in their own skin. Except that he was shivering, because laws of physics and biology did not apply in this particular situation and he was damn cold.

They moved to a clear spot on the floor. Magic or no magic, Tony wasn’t interested in experimenting with the whole two objects cannot occupy the same space. Bad enough he might end up all merged up with Steve. (Non-zero possibility. Terrifying.)

Tony stepped into Steve’s personal space. Steve had hugged him, a few times, but they were going to need to be even closer than that. “Put your arms around me,” Tony said.

One of Steve’s arms went around Tony’s shoulders and the other curled around his hips. With a soft exhale, Steve pulled him in. _Oh god._ This was so unfair. He was going to have to live with this memory for the rest of his life. How nicely they fit together, Steve’s chin snuggling down on Tony’s head, the way Tony’s face fit into the curve of Steve’s shoulder, the body heat radiating out of Steve’s chest that made Tony want to cuddle up to that smooth, silky skin and just take up residence. Never moving again.

Tony pressed the emitter between his palm and Steve’s broad back.

“Here goes everything,” Tony said and crushed it.

***

Growing was… both oddly painless and faster than Steve might have expected. One moment, they were somewhat shorter than an action figure, and the next second they were shooting up toward the ceiling. It didn’t hurt. He wasn’t sure why he’d expected it to, but he’d certainly been braced for it. But, perhaps because he was, he was entirely conscious of how his body felt with Tony crowded up against him.

Steve had never been more aware of all six foot two inches of his height as when Tony was clinging to him like a sex-god limpet. Every bit of his skin tingled, like he’d been touched very lightly with an electric current; sensation sizzled from nerve to nerve. Impossible heat where their skin touched, making his scalp prickle and his mouth water and…

_Shit._

Yeah, Tony was going to notice _that_.

Tony shifted slightly, his legs tangled up with Steve’s and… oh. _OH_. Well, at least Steve wasn’t the only one sprouting wood, but oh, man this was going to be so awkward.

“I think you can let go--” Tony tipped his chin and oh, _sweet jesus, mary and joseph_. He was so close and his dark eyes were wide, the pupils turning his gaze black, and his mouth was just the tiniest bit open, lower lip wet and… Steve couldn’t look away from Tony’s mouth, soft, lush, beguiling. It was simply the most kissable mouth Steve had ever seen. Not that he was planning to kiss it, of course.

Except… maybe he could blame it on some sort of magic crazy. Steve considered himself to be an expert in self-denial; maybe he’d used it all up.

“Tony,” Steve said, soft, his hand splaying across Tony’s lower back to keep him from moving away. “I think I’m going to kiss you now.”

Tony blinked, eyes going even darker, then his eyelashes fluttered and he went up on tiptoe, bringing his mouth closer to Steve’s, invading Steve’s space and inviting him in at the same time. Steve tilted his head and came down on Tony’s mouth.

The kiss started hesitant, small movements. Almost impersonal, somehow, and yet it sent a frisson of delicious tension up Steve’s spine. Warmth spread from the sensitive, tender skin of his mouth, traveled downward, left him with a tingling awareness of Tony’s body, lithe and compact and graceful, against his. The faint taste of Tony’s mouth slid over Steve’s tongue. Tony kissed him, brief, hard, possessive in some fey manner. It zinged through him, and, dazed, Steve stepped back, staring down at Tony as if he’d never seen the man before. Tony shivered. His tongue flicked out to taste his own lips, leaving them shining.

Steve’s heart beat harder in his chest, heat blazed intensely through his body, leaving him weakened and wanting. He drew Tony back to him, hand curling around Tony’s neck, tipping his head back. Slowly, so slowly, he bent and captured Tony’s mouth again, sliding his fingers into Tony’s hair, feeling the soft silkiness, tacky with sweat and product. Tony’s mouth opened to Steve’s questing tongue and he kissed with a sensual easiness that gathered Steve closer, deeper, until he was dizzy with it, clutching at Tony not just for closeness but to manage to stand upright at all.

Tony’s lips were cool, firm, the taste of him was hot and dark and spicy. It spiraled through Steve in a heated shiver, shuddering through his bones in waves and curling up at the base of his cock.

“Steve?” Tony blinked, like he was waking up.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Steve stammered, his neck heating up and his skin prickling with gooseflesh. “I --”

“I’m not,” Tony said, easily enough. He bounced up on his toes -- and God, Steve was mindful of the way Tony’s body slid over his skin -- and pecked Steve’s mouth again. “I’ve wanted to kiss you since the first minute I laid eyes on you. Of course, then you opened your mouth and I kinda reconsidered my options, but don’t think for one second that this is just something _you_ wanted. Full enthusiastic consent here, for your kisses, Captain.” Tony touched his lips to Steve’s once more, then, with what might have been recklessness, or bravery, Tony added, “and anything else you might want.”

***

Tony couldn’t be awake. He was dreaming this, had to be. If it was a dream, though, he didn’t want to wake up.

Big, warm hands smoothed and kneaded and caressed his skin, leaving him feeling hot and desired. Wanted. Tony moved, squirming under Steve’s touch, wanting more. His skin was alive, waking up against Steve’s fingers, enticing, exquisite ripples of need rose from each stroke.

Steve’s mouth came down on his again, soft, tender, with a hint of possession. He nipped at Tony’s lips. “Open up,” Steve pleaded and Tony surrendered. Tony opened his mouth to question, quip, seduce, something, but Steve didn’t give him any time. As soon as Tony’s lips parted, his mouth was filled with the taste of Steve’s tongue. Steve’s tongue stroked inside his mouth, exploring, learning. He flicked the tip of his tongue along Tony’s lip, tickling at the sensitive corner where his lips joined until Tony was gasping for breath, shaking with desire.

Tony brought his hands up to cup Steve’s jaw, felt the rough plane of his cheek, the faint hint of stubble, and just that nearly drove him wild; Steve was always so clean-cut, spick-and-span, inspection-ready. The glint of beard, barely seen, was an unexpected treasure, something no one else knew about, it was Tony’s and Tony’s alone.

 

[ ](http://it.tinypic.com?ref=2rnwo0i)

 

Steve stroked down Tony’s back, hands sliding over the curve of his ass and Tony groaned into Steve’s mouth. “Desk drawer,” Tony muttered.

“What?”

“Desk drawer, in the drawer, Steve, get with the program,” Tony said, nudging Steve backward until they were against the desk. He rummaged around in the drawer and found what he was looking for. “Here.” He handed Steve the little bottle of lube.

For someone who was rutting up against his thigh, Steve blushed delightfully when he glanced down at what Tony had given him. “Jesus, Tony.”

Rather than let Steve work himself up over the fact that, yes, Tony was a lube ninja, Tony brushed his hands down Steve’s hips, thumbs rubbing circles over that glorious dip. “I like to be prepared for anything. Everything. But if you don’t want --”

“Tony.” Steve breathed out, warm air against Tony’s throat and Tony leaned his head back to give Steve access. Steve groaned, his hips pumped once against Tony’s. The sound of his deep voice rumbled through Tony’s bones. He feathered light, hot kisses against Tony’s skin, and Tony trembled in response.

 _Steve Rogers is kissing me._ How did this even happen? And Tony didn’t know, he didn’t care, he just wanted it not to stop, he wanted more, needed more.

With a sudden, aching sound, Steve turned him, pushed Tony against the wall, slamming the breath out of him and then kissed him, hands pinning him in place, one on either side of his head, demanding, taking, conquering. Steve kissed a slow path along Tony’s jaw, down his neck, caressed the hollow of Tony’s throat with his tongue. Tony melted, tensed, squirmed, unable to remain still. He shoved one thigh between Steve’s legs and brought it up. Steve rode his thigh, rubbing against him, leaving warm, sticky trails of precome along Tony’s hip and belly.

The wall was… a little uncomfortable. Cold. But Tony wasn’t about to complain. Especially when Steve’s lube-slicked fingers trailed down his crack.

Tony shivered and then moaned when Steve’s mouth came down, hot and wet, against his nipple, sucking in the small bud and working it with his tongue, the contrast to the chilly wall was evil and necessary and, oh, god. Steve’s fingers circled his hole, getting him wet, getting him ready.

When Steve’s finger breached him, Tony was done with thinking. His brain packed its bags and left for Tahiti without him. That was okay, Tony was okay with that. Brain gone, higher thoughts abandoned him and Tony could feel and feel and need and want.

His hands came down on Steve’s shoulders, pulling himself closer. Steve lifted him, easily, one arm under Tony’s thighs to brace him against the wall, folded up like a deck chair. “Oh, that’s, that’s super hot,” Tony said, breathless and not quite laughing.

Steve opened him up, fast, hard. He twisted his wrist, sending zings of sensation up Tony’s body. Tony arched, pushing against the wall, wanting to get closer, closer.

“Tony, god,” Steve muttered. He bit the shell of Tony’s ear, breathing hot, moist air into it.

A large, calloused hand smoothed down over Tony’s belly, then circled his cock, stroking him. Tony was suspended between the pressure on his back and Steve’s hand that cupped his ass, two fingers still inside him, working him open and it was sweet and hot and oh, god that was brilliant. His core muscles were crying abuse already, but oh, god, Tony couldn’t have stopped if the workshop was on fire.

Steve growled, a deep noise of masculine satisfaction as Tony went pliant under his hand and then, with a bounce, Tony found himself impaled on the head of Steve’s cock, the pressure and stretch hot and hard.

“Oh, my Christ,” Tony said, wrapping his arms tighter around Steve’s neck. “Fuck, Steve, oh, Jesus.”

He was tense as a bowstring, thrumming with need, when Steve murmured in his ear, “God, you’re tight, you feel so good, so good around me, Tony, Tony, please.”

“You’re begging _me_?” Tony writhed, trying to get Steve deeper. “Christ, Rogers, fuck me _now_.”

It was a good thing that Steve was holding him up, because when he finally rocked the rest of the way in, Tony’s legs would have gone out if he'd been standing. As it was, he moaned and wriggled helplessly, lost to sensation. Steve slammed into him, over and over, slick and hot and hard and delicious and perfect.

Tony clutched Steve tight to himself, small moans overtaking him as Steve pushed deeper, deeper. Steve’s eyes were closed; his gorgeous, perfect face caught up in the urgency of their coupling. His movements became more frantic and demanding as he gave Tony everything Tony needed, until Tony arched and climaxed over Steve’s hand, smearing come between them, sticky and hot.

It was some time before Tony came back to an awareness of self as separate from Steve as Steve slammed into him again, driving him against the wall, no longer cold, but hard and harsh, a contrast and a complement to Steve’s movements. His jaw tightened for a moment, and then he stiffened. And oh, sweet god, the noise that came out of Steve’s mouth when he came. Tony could pay a fortune, spend the rest of his life trying for that sound again. Holy Christ.

Tony shuddered as Steve’s cock twitched inside him, the hot spurt of come already leaking out his ass as Steve shivered, trembled, and then slowly pulled out, letting Tony slump to the floor. Steve kept them both upright, but only barely, his whole body quaking and weak.

“Oh, god, Tony,” Steve said. He raised his head, eyes wrecked and mouth trembling. “I shouldn’t have done that --”

“You definitely should have,” Tony said. “Come on, Cap, please don’t have regrets already, I don’t know that I could deal with that much crushing disappointment in one day.”

“Huh?”

“Did you miss the part where I really wanted this, Steve? That I’ve _always_ wanted it?”

Steve smiled, and oh, God, that was utterly unfair, because that smile lit up everything in the room, shone a spotlight on Tony and he was nearly blinded by it. “You did?”

“Always,” Tony repeated. And then he kissed Steve, to emphasize the point. And then he kissed Steve again, because he _could_. And then he kissed Steve again, because he _wanted to_. And somewhere in there, Steve was kissing him back because _Steve_ wanted to.

“So, later, do you want to--” Steve started.

“Yes.”

***

“I’m sorry, Agent Romanov,” JARVIS said. “I’m afraid that being shrunk and the effort of crossing the city, and getting regrown to their normal size has quite worn the Captain and sir out. They are sleeping, and I am not going to disturb them right now. Thank you very much for returning their gear.”

 

Notes:

Research on actual effects of shrinking taken in whole and in part from <http://www.nbcnews.com/science/weird-science/why-are-ant-man-shrink-rays-impossible-n391421>

 


End file.
